Northland the real deal, says new immigrant family from UK

Northland needs more people like the Deal family, if the boffins are to be believed.
Professor Ian Pool, of Waikato University's Population Studies Centre, says the region needs to attract more skilled young families - or it risks sliding into stagnation.
English couple John and Carol Deal arrived in Whangarei a month ago with their children, aged six and three, and have just moved into a rental home in McLeod Bay.
Carol was a police officer in the UK, while John worked in journalism and public relations.
The couple initially migrated to Brisbane in 1999, but fell in love with the Parua Bay area during a holiday four years ago.
They felt Australian society was becoming increasingly Americanised, and relished New Zealand's scenery and relative lack of traffic.
"But the overwhelming thing that hit us - from the people running the motel to the lady in the IRD office - was that people seem to have more time for each other here," John says.
Switching allegiance from soccer to rugby isn't easy, but the real gamble is finding work.
"It would be easier finding a job in Auckland, but I can't see the point of coming from the UK and then sitting in traffic on the Harbour Bridge every morning."
* Our population growth lagging
By Peter De Graaf
Northland's population growth lagged behind the national average in the past year, according to the latest figures from Statistics New Zealand.
In the year to the end of June, the region's population increased by 0.6 percent - below the New Zealand average of 0.9 percent.
Northland's fastest growth was in the Whangarei district, while at the other end of the scale, the Kaipara shrank slightly.
The figures come on the heels of a Waikato University study showing much of New Zealand - apart from the major cities and sunbelt areas such as the western Bay of Plenty - has stagnated since the mid-1980s. The study's main author, Dargaville-raised Ian Pool, said only Northland and Waikato had bucked the trend over the past two decades by clocking up good population growth.
However, Professor Pool warned it was critical to Northland's economic growth that the region attracted, or held on to, more skilled young people - the factors of "production and reproduction", as he put it.
The Northland Skills Strategy is one of the initiatives trying to tackle Northland's skills shortage, as well as improve links between education and industry. The initiative brings together the Chamber of Commerce, Work and Income, Enterprise Northland and other organisations.
Project manager Damien Banks said Northland would always lose some of its young people when they went to university.
"That's just a given - the question is, once they go, how do you attract them back? We haven't thought about that much in the past."
Promoting Northland's lifestyle was one of the keys to attracting people, Mr Banks said.
"When I was at uni a lot of us said, `we'll never go back to Whangarei' - but now we've starting drifting back. It's the weather, beaches and lifestyle, and it's close to Auckland so you're not in the boondocks."
The current crop of high school students also had to be convinced there were good careers to be had without leaving the region.
Northland's key sectors - agriculture, horticulture, wood processing, building and tourism - offered excellent opportunities for work and training, not just the low-level jobs of "milking cows and banging in nails".
Whangarei mayor Pamela Peters said the district was striving to attract families by improving facilities such as the library and the pool, and by hosting events.
Meanwhile, Kaipara Development Agency chairman Marshall Taylor said keeping young people in the Kaipara would always be a challenge. However, he believed the district would attract industry, for example in dairying, beef and tourism, as Northland's economy grew. The Kaipara's biggest asset, aside from natural tourist attractions, was that it was an hour-and-a-half from Auckland.